texas-weed. stolonizing (broadcast sprigging) creates a much quicker lawn than plugging. i was originally looking into plugging, but don't want to wait that long for it to fill in. i am going to prepare the soil the same way, no matter if i seed, sprig, or plug -- so if i can find an efficient way to produce sprigs from sod, it will actually be less work than plugging. tiemco - yes, i asked the sod producer. they offer sprigging, but the machine they use shreds the sod into sprigs and plants the sprigs - not something that makes sense on my 1/4 acre lawn. they don't have a separate machine for creating sprigs for delivery to a customer. the sod producer has kindly offered to ask around though, to see what he can do. i just want to be prepared and not assume that he'll find something - and was hoping someone reading this forum might have experience with this issue. thx again! This post was edited by ncredclaygardener on Tue, Mar 5, 13 at 15:48

Thanks waicklen, well since you asked...why yes, I do! This pic was taken on 6-20-10: 7-2-10, note the huge pile of crabgrass to the left...I pulled this out of the Bermuda and it's only a drop in the bucket! There was virtually no crabgrass in the Turfallo (probably because I put the cardboard and newspaper down in March - just the right time to prevent the seeds from germinating): I wasn't sure how it would respond to mowing so I had the 2nd patch (not the original test area) mowed first on 7-14-10: 7-23-10, original test patch is pretty shaggy looking at about 6-8 inches tall, 2nd patch looks good after mowing: 7-24-10 Baby's first haircut: 7-28-10, couple days after the first mowing, grass is brownish, all the green tips were cut off, I was worried... ...but it turned green again pretty quickly as you can see in the background of this pic taken on 8-12-10: I am very happy with it, it has weathered this heatwave well with very little attention, I think I watered it maybe 3 times this summer and I probably could have avoided mowing completely if I wanted to.

OMG! Stop IT! STOPIT! Slow down!! Relax. Chill. Take this weekend off from the lawn and go to Schlitterbahn or something. You are waaaaay over thinking this. And you're, well, let's just leave it at that. I have a lot of questions about how and why you did what you did, but I'm not going to ask - I assume someone you trust told you to do all that stuff. For the most part they were misinformed about what works in Austin and other places, too. Here's how you do a lawn in Round Rock. First look around you and notice that nobody has a zoysia lawn. There must be a reason for that. The first thing to know about gardening is to select plants that are well adapted to your climate and soil. That's the reason about 80% of the lawns are St Augustine and 15% are one form of bermuda or another. The rest are either xeriscaped or some form of zoysia, but those can be hard to find. The reason everyone has St Augustine is that it is dead simple to grow. The reason they don't have zoysia boils down to disease. Once it gets a spot of fungus, it goes dormant for the rest of the season. It will come back next April, but most people choose to replant with St Aug or bermuda. People will tell you that St Augustine requires too much water, but all grass needs to be watered once a week to look good. You've done something that you will be reminded of over the course of the next 3 years. You rototilled. I realize the Seedland website suggests rototilling. I'm not sure where that comes from but it is universally a bad idea. Scott's website also tells you to rototill in preparation for new grass. That's dead wrong. What is going to happen is your fluffy rototilled soil will settle back and form a new structure over the next 3 years. As that happens it settles unevenly leaving holes and hills for you and your mower to run over. It you try to level it now or next year it will continue to settle and recreate new hills and holes until the soil structure is finally finalized. The new structure will be formed by soil microbes, chemistry, soil mechanics, and gravity. You should have ignored the hard soil and rocks under the top layer of soil. That can be addressed from the surface without damaging the existing soil structure. I did not see any zoysia in the pictures. The first close up pic might be crabgrass but is more likely dallisgrass. Crabgrass would be much preferred because it will all die in about November with the first frost. Dallisgrass is perennial and will come back if it freezes out or not. Your second picture shows nutgrass. Nutgrass is a sedge (more formally it is called nut sedge). As a sedge it needs a sedge killer to affect it even slightly. Nutgrass is a swamp type grass that much prefers continually moist soil to even occasionally moist soil. But if it gets continual moisture it will take off and not look back. There is another sedge called green kyllinga that looks a lot like nut grass. Green kyllinga is not nearly as aggressive as nut grass, but it also will survive in deeply dried out soil. Either one needs a sedge killer to kill it. Sedgehammer is one and Image is the other one. If that is nutgrass and you get yourself on a deep and infrequent watering program, the nutgrass has a good chance of going away permanently. In step 6 you sorta wasted the bags of fertilizer. There were no roots for the fertilizer to fertilize. By the time the grass would have come in the fertilizer would have been washed through. At step 8 the thing to do would have been to roll the seed down. Rollers are not used to level the soil. They are used to press the seed down into the surface of the soil. Leveling is done with a drag which picks up soil/sand from the high spots and drags it to the low spots. Then the soil is wet down and soil added to the low spots that appear when it was wet down. But I digress. Step 9!! You're using my favorite sprinkler. I have six or seven of those (several houses with large yards). Step 10. Yes you could have done something else to the soil, but you didn't need to. And you did not need more soil. More soil too often leads to new drainage issues. The worst case is the soil backs up rainwater causing it to flood the house. You did not need the 20 bags. Step 13. Are you going to leave the hoses buried or, sometime in the future, dig them up? I have hose splitters on top of the ground to cover all the grass at once. Sears hoses, by the way, have a lifetime guarantee and you don't need to keep the receipt. Step 14. Hmmm. Those oscillators barely put out any water. 15 minutes 4x per day is probably fine even running through the night. I can't imagine that would be too much water. Step 15. The bastard weeds sprouted in 9 days which too often leads the home owner to stop watering frequently enough to sprout the real grass seed. What you should have done was water exactly like you did immediately after applying the RoundUp. That would have sprouted all those weed seeds that you now have. Then you could have reapplied RU to kill the newly sprouted weeds. THEN you put down the grass seed after all the weeds are outta there. Step 17. Don't use any more starter fertilizer until you have your soil tested ($25) at Logan Labs and you post the results here for feedback. With Texas soil you have to worry about P and K levels. No other test labs will give you the quality of results that Logan Labs will. TAMU, in particular, has a terrible reputation for their soil testing problems. Step 19. The new grass coming in might be the zoysia. The problem now is the weeds are up and shading out the new seedlings. Zenith needs sunlight to take root. But at this point you have a mostly dallisgrass lawn. Dallisgrass can be killed with atrazine. If I remember correctly zoysia is safe with atrazine. But is NEW zoysia seedlings safe from atrazine? I'm not sure of that. At this point you're going to have a weed lawn. What do you want to do? I would suggest rethinking the logic behind zoysia. Let's discuss that with respect to how to proceed. If you're working with a tight budget let us know. Some lawns are a lot more work over the long haul. What are you looking for? Do you want the nicest lawn on the block or just something to keep the mud out of the house? Or something in between? To have a really nice bermuda lawn is a lot of work with mowing 3x per week and monthly feeding. To have a really nice St Augustine is dead simple with mowing every week or two and feeding 3 to 5 times a year. I'm not mentioning watering because all lawns need to be watered once a week in the summer heat, so that's just the way it is. There are some non traditional grasses that can be used for low water usage if you want to go that direction. Even prairie grass is preferable to zoysia. So what do you want?

You definitely did not water too much. A more normal schedule for new sod would be 5-10 minutes but 3x per day for 2-3 weeks or until the roots knit into the soil. Did the installer roll the sod down? I suspect not., and I say that because he rototilled first. Someone who knew about the need for rolling would also know about the issues with rototilling. Before I get ugly with you, why zoysia and not St Augustine? At this point, I assume the grass knit down anyway despite the not rolling and the slightly imperfect water. There are several reasons why the grass might look like that. One is not rolling. Rolling is necessary to ensure the bottom of the sod contacts the top of the soil. Roots won't grow through the air to reach the soil. Another reason is the grass might have been stressed on the pallet. Did the grass sit on the pallet longer than a day before he put it down? But no matter the cause, it will have repaired itself and look normal next April when it comes out of winter dormancy. Zoysia does not fix itself quickly, but some sort of magic happens over the winter. I had some get damaged by fungus in May, and it remained dead looking for the entire season until the following April. It came back very normal looking; however, by that time it had to compete with the bermuda grass that came in for 9 months while the zoysia sat it out. I have seen many zoysia installations in San Antonio do the same thing. Once damaged during the growing season, bermuda comes in and it's all over. You have the advantage of it being late in the year with cooler soils, so the bermuda may not get a foothold on yours. Those other zoysia lawns I saw converted to St Augustine after the first bout with disease. With the shade you have I never would have considered anything but St Augustine, but hang in there and give this grass a good try next season. Here's what to do until the grass stops growing. Watering: You'll have to ease into this with new sod, but it is important. Deep and infrequent is the mantra for watering. This is for all turf grass all over the place. Deep means 1 inch all at one time. Put some cat food or tuna cans around the yard, and time how long it takes your sprinkler(s) to fill all the cans. Memorize that time. That will be the time you water from now on. My hose, sprinkler and water pressure takes 8 full hours to fill the cans. Your time will likely be less. I like gentle watering. As for watering frequency, that depends on the daytime air temperature. With temps in the 90s, deep water once per week. With temps in the 80s, deep water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s, deep water once every 3 weeks. With temps below 70, deep water once a month. Note that you have to keep up with quickly changing temps in the spring and fall. This deep and infrequent schedule works in Phoenix and in Vermont, so it should work for you. The reason for deep and infrequent is to grow deeper, more drought resistant roots and to allow the soil to dry completely at the surface for several days before watering again. If it rains, reset your calendar to account for the rainfall. Mulch mow at the mower's highest setting. This helps to develop deep roots as well as fight off weeds. Fertilizer: I assume you're going organic since you already used the Dillo Dirt. For readers who are not from Austin, Dillo Dirt is Austin's answer to Milorganite. DD is more of a compost product than a baked microbe product. You can use the Dillo Dirt as often as you can afford it. Apply at a rate of 15 pounds per 1,000 square feet. As an alternative you can use corn meal, corn gluten meal, or alfalfa pellets from any feed store. App rate is 15 pounds per 1,000. After the grass stops growing but is still green, make one last fertilizer app. Then do not fertilize again until Washington's Birthday. If you are not going with organics, then skip the Feb fertilizer application. But in either case, fertilize again in late May (Memorial Day is good). The grass should awaken in late March. Spot spray for weeds in mid April.